The relationship between you and your prof has its beginning and end in your education. It is, therefore, unwise to send him an e-mail which demonstrates that he is failing. Several things:
1. E-mail is great. You don't have to slog across campus at a pre-defined time in order to wait in line outside my office, then exchange niceties, then ask for whatever it is you want, then have me say "no", then stomp off across campus again. What a time saver!
I welcome e-mail, however:
2. My name is not Dude or u. And while I'm clever enough to decipher sludge like "wut hw tmrw do", I won't. My attitude doesn't arise from my inherent professorial arrogance, but from the fact that you've just insulted me. Keeping up with the latest fads and slang is something for the insecure young. I'm not young nor insecure. I don't feel the slightest urge to impress anyone with how groovy I can talk. Your suggestion that I do or ought to rubs my fur the wrong way. Please do me the courtesy of speaking to me like an adult.
3. Normally, I have two hundred and some students every semester. If you e-mail me saying, "Do we have homework Friday?" I can't answer if I don't know your name and which section you're in. So first, note that I can not deduce your name from your e-mail address mowhawkboy@tattoos.edu. Please tell me your name. Second, even with your name, I have to open up all my spreadsheets (there may be as many as 7) and hunt through them to find the information you've requested. It takes me 15 minutes to answer a short question, when it should have taken 1 minute. Please supply which course you're in and which discussion section. Do the math: If I have 240 students and they each take up 15 minutes of my time per week, that's 60 hours. That doesn't leave much time for preparation, lecturing and grading.
4. This is not a big deal, but while we're here: Plain text is best. You can send me decorated messages if you like, full of colors, italics and boldness, but you should realize that there's a good chance that it will look like "I A^bfreallybf &need& NNaNN usCn," by the time it passes through all the machines between yours and mine.
The summary is: please be considerate of my feelings and my time. The extra 10 seconds you spend typing your name and section saves me 10 minutes.
The Calc Ninja
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i'm just not going to e-mail you at all.
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